Category:American inventors

Pages in this category should be moved to subcategories where applicable. This category may require frequent maintenance to avoid becoming too large. It should directly contain very few, if any, pages and should mainly contain subcategories.

1.
Florida Inventors Hall of Fame
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The Florida Inventors Hall of Fame is an organization that honors Florida inventors, and is housed in the USF Research Park at the University of South Florida in Tampa. It was founded in 2013 by Dr. Paul R. Sanberg, senior vice president for research and innovation at USF, and is one of five state-specific halls of fame dedicated to inventors in the United States. In April 2014, State Senator Jeff Brandes sponsored the recognition of it, honoring the hall of fame for its commitment to invention, discovery, innovation, and excellence. The FIHF was founded by Paul Sanberg, after visiting the National Inventors Hall of Fame, located in Alexandria, Virginia, the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame was formed in 2013 and the first induction ceremony was held September 10,2014, in Tampa Florida. The first inductees included historic inventors Thomas Edison, Robert Cade, John Gorrie, and William Glenn, as well as active scientists, Shin-Tson Wu. The second annual ceremony has been announced for October 2,2015. The FIHF is led by a board, chaired by Sanberg. The FIHF inducts new honorees annuallythrough a nomination and review process, among the first inductees to the hall of fame were optics physicist Shin-Tson Wu, a University of Central Florida professor. Wu is most notable for improving liquid crystal displays which are used in the screens of appliances like computers, smart phones, and televisions

2.
National Inventors Hall of Fame
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The National Inventors Hall of Fame is an American not-for-profit organization which recognizes individual inventors who hold a U. S. patent of highly significant technology. Founded in 1973, its mission is to honor the people responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social. As of 2017,547 inventors have been inducted, mostly constituting historic persons from the past three centuries, but including about 100 living inductees, an NIHF committee chooses an annual inductee class in February from nominations accepted from all sources. Nominees must hold a U. S. patent of significant contribution to the U. S. welfare, the 2017 class included 15 inventors, including Howard Head for skis and tennis rackets, and Augustine Sackett for drywall. The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 on the initiative of H. Hume Mathews, in the following year, it gained a major sponsor in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office from Washington, D. C, at first, the Hall was housed in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D. C. near the Washington National Airport, a committee was formed in 1986 to find a new home for it. For a time, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the frontrunner, but in 1987, a patent attorney from Akron, Edwin “Ned” Oldham, the representative from the National Council of Patent Law Associations, led the drive to move the Hall to Akron. The construction of the new building was finished in 1995 and the Hall opened to the public with the name of the Inventure Place, from the beginning, the Inventure Place was intended to be more than a science and technology museum and library. It was designed to double as a workshop and a national resource center for creativity. Designed by an architect from New York City, James Stewart Polshek, it was a building, shaped like a curving row of white sails. One of the exhibits allowed the visitors to use computer programs for making animations, but attendance did not meet the expectations and the museum never made a profit, although its related ventures and programs, such as Invent Now and Camp Invention, proved to be more successful. In 2002, its name was changed to the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, six years later the Hall moved to Alexandria. Its former facility was converted to a school for students in grades between 5th and 8th. It is now the National Inventors Hall of Fame STEM Middle School, in Alexandria, the National Inventors Hall of Fame operates a museum in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office building at 600 Dulany Street, with a gallery of portraits of the honorees, interactive kiosks. Camp Invention, founded in 1990, is a summer camp for children. Camp Invention is the nationally recognized summer program focused on creativity, innovation, real-world problem solving

3.
Berenice Abbott
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Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio and brought up there by her divorced mother, née Lillian Alice Bunn. She attended Ohio State University for two semesters, but left in early 1918 and her university studies included theater and sculpture. Spending two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin and she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. During this time, she adopted the French spelling of her first name, Berenice, in addition to her work in the visual arts, Abbott published poetry in the experimental literary journal transition. Abbott first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray hired her as an assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse. Later she wrote, I took to photography like a duck to water, I never wanted to do anything else. Ray was impressed by her work and allowed her to use his studio to take her own photographs. In 1926, she exhibited her work in the gallery Au Sacre du Printemps, after a short time studying photography in Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1927 and started a second studio, on the rue Servandoni. Abbotts subjects were people in the artistic and literary worlds, including French nationals, expatriates, according to Sylvia Beach, To be done by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody. Abbotts work was exhibited with that of Man Ray, André Kertész, and others in Paris, in the Salon de lEscalier and her portraiture was unusual within exhibitions of modernist photography held in 1928–9 in Brussels and Germany. In 1925, Man Ray introduced her to Eugène Atgets photographs and she became interested in Atgets work, and managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1927. An early tangible result was the 1930 book Atget, photographe de Paris, Abbotts work on Atgets behalf would continue until her sale of the archive to the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. In addition to her book The World of Atget, she provided the photographs for A Vision of Paris, published a portfolio, Twenty Photographs and her sustained efforts helped Atget gain international recognition. In early 1929, Abbott visited New York City, ostensibly to find an American publisher for Atgets photographs, upon seeing the city again, however, Abbott immediately saw its photographic potential. Accordingly, she went back to Paris, closed up her studio and her first photographs of the city were taken with a hand-held Kurt-Bentzin camera, but soon she acquired a Century Universal camera which produced 8 x 10 inch negatives. Using this large format camera, Abbott photographed New York City with the diligence and her work has provided a historical chronicle of many now-destroyed buildings and neighborhoods of Manhattan. Abbott worked on her New York project independently for six years, unable to get support from organizations, foundations. She supported herself with work and teaching at the New School of Social Research beginning in 1933

4.
Morris Abrams
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Morris Abrams was the founder of Arrow Fastener Co. Inc. a manufacturer of fastening tools that since 1999 has been a subsidiary of Masco Corporation. Abrams was the first generation of his family to be born in the United States, in 1929, Morris Abrams founded Arrow. One model of his gun, the T50, was introduced in the early 1950s, became a registered trademark of the company in 1989. It continues to be in production into the 21st century, in the 1960s after Morris Abrams became ill, his son Allan Abrams took over the family business which continued to grow and now also includes glue guns, rivet tools, and brad nailers. In September 1999, Arrow was one of five home improvement companies purchased by Masco Corporation, official website for Arrow Fastener Co

5.
Bob Adams (electrical engineer)
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Robert Adams is Technical Fellow at Analog Devices, Inc. His focus is on signal-processing and conversion for professional audio and he is a leader in the development of sigma-delta converters, introducing new industry concepts including mismatch-shaping, multi-bit quantization, and continuous-time architectures. Adams graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University in 1976, from 1977 to 1988 he worked for DBX, an audio company. There, he helped develop the industrys first audio converter with greater than 16-bit resolution, in 1988, he joined the Converter Group of Analog Devices as a Senior Staff Designer, and went on to develop ADIs first sigma-delta converters in partnership with Paul Ferguson. He produced the world’s first monolithic asynchronous sample rate converters, as of 1998, Adams had received 15 patents related to audio signal processing. Pederson Award “for contributions to noise-shaping data converter circuits, digital signal processing, and log-domain analog filters”

6.
Isaac Adams
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Isaac Adams was an American inventor and politician. He served in the Massachusetts Senate and invented the Adams Power Press, Adams was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the son of Benjamin Adams and Elizabeth Adams. His education was limited, and at an age he was an operative in a cotton factory. Afterward he learned the trade of cabinet maker, but in 1824 went to Boston and he invented the Adams Power Press in 1827, and it was introduced in 1830. The machine worked a revolution in the art of printing, and beginning in 1836, became the leading machine used in printing for much of the nineteenth century. It substantially reduced the cost of production, and made books more widely available. He was a member of the Massachusetts Senate in 1840, and his last years were spent in retirement. The Contest of Isaac Adamss Will, speculative Activities of the American Emigrant Aid Company. See page 261 and the accompanying footnote 125, simonds, Thomas C. Adams Printing Press and Machine Shop. Description of factory at what was Dorchester Neck, now Ward XII of the City of Boston

7.
Richard Adams (inventor)
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Richard Adams is an independent inventor and engineer. Since building and demonstrating a video camera as a child, his work has garnered media interest. His first project was the construction of a camera that he started building when he was ten years old. He worked entirely at home without the aid of his school and it originally gained coverage in the Miami Herald when he had enlisted the newspaper’s help to find a TV station that would help him tune the camera. Although he did not invent, the fact that a child could build one cheaply drove home a point that made others desirous of this technology and it continued to be publicized by the Herald and other newspapers each time the camera made a public appearance. Whilst employed in Silicon Valley between 1976 and 1982, Adams gave demonstrations on the testing of codecs and authored a paper on the subject, in 1982, Adams founded Happy Computers to market and sell add-in boards that he had invented for Atari computer disk drives. These boards greatly increased the speed at which disks could be read and written to and remained popular for many years

8.
Anthony Adducci
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Anthony J. Adducci was a pioneer of the medical device industry in Minnesota. Anthony J. Adducci was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 14,1937 and he was married to Sandra Gordon, had three children, Michael, Brian, and Alicia. He attended Saint Marys University of Minnesota receiving the BS degree in Physics in 1959 and he did additional study in electrical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, Illinois and in business administration at the University of Minnesota. In 1960, he was employed as an engineer for the Jensen Manufacturing Company in Chicago, Illinois where he engaged in the design and development of loudspeakers. He also taught courses to the Air Force in Biloxi. While in Chicago in 1963, Adducci worked with a local physician and they published a paper in the IEEE biomedical area. In August 1964, he accepted a position with the Sperry Rand Corporations UNIVAC Division in St. Paul Minnesota as a design engineer engaged in the logic design of computer peripheral equipment. In April 1966, he joined Medtronic as a Sales Engineer, anthony was the ninetieth employee at the time. While at Medtronic he served in technical and marking responsibilities including, sales administration manager. He taught surgeons around the United States in the basics of how pacemakers work, the physiology of the cardiovascular system, anthony was involved in over fifty surgeries while at Medtronic. In February 1972, he co-founded Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. of St. Paul, CPI was a highly successful start up venture, going from zero sales in 1972 to over $47 million and highly profitable when it was acquired by Eli Lilly and Company in 1978 for $127 million. In August 1998 he became the Commander of the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office Community Service Posse in Arizona, catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis Trustee of Saint Marys University of Minnesota. Development Committee of the North American College of Rome Health Advisory Council of the College of St. Catherine in St, a Charitable foundation with special interest in child abuse, battered woman and special educational programs for the elderly. Induction into the Minnesota Science and Technology Hall of Fame Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem Knight in the Order of Malta, Commander of the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office Community Service Posse. 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do Karate 3rd degree black belt in Aikido, ovulation Detection by Internal Cranial Temperature Measurements, January,1965, Issue IEEE Transactions on Bio-Medical Engineering, Volume BME-12, Number 1, pp. 2–7. Special Electrical Considerations in the Intensive Coronary Care Unit,1970 September Issue, the pacer structure is enclosed in a hermetically sealed metallic enclosure, with means being provided in the enclosure for passing electrode leads in sealed relationship therethrough. The outer surface of the casing is polished metal*, and is continuous in all areas, in certain instances, the continuity may be with the exception of the zone through which the external electrode leads pass. *In the patent claim the term polished metal * was used as an all-encompassing description, the initial commercial artificial pacemaker, under the patent in 1972, used stainless steel as a non-hermetic encasing medium

9.
Alan Adler
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Alan Adler is an American inventor. His inventions include aerodynamic toys, such as footballs with fins and flying rings and his Aerobie Pro flying ring set several world records for the farthest thrown object. In 2005 he invented a coffee brewing device and method called the AeroPress and he has approximately 40 patents in electronics, optics, and aerodynamics. He lives in Los Altos, California and is owner/president of Aerobie, Aerobie website Inventor portrait on Vimeo

10.
Robert Adler
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Robert Adler was an Austrian-born American inventor who held numerous patents. He worked for Zenith retiring as the companys Vice President and Director of Research and his work included developing early sound based remote controls for televisions, which were the standard for 25 years until replaced by IR remotes that could transmit more complex commands. Adler was born in Vienna in 1913, the son of Jenny, a doctor, and Max Adler and he earned a Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Vienna in 1937. Following Austrias annexation by Nazi Germany in 1939, Dr. Adler and he traveled first to Belgium, then to England, where he acted on the advice of friends, who recommended that he emigrate to the United States. After emigrating to the United States, he began working at Zenith Electronics in the division in 1941. In his lifetime, Adler was granted 58 US patents, the invention Adler is best known for is the wireless remote control for televisions. While not the first remote control, its technology was a vast improvement over previous remote control systems. The Flash-Matic used directional flashlight in the device, and photo cells in the television set itself. One of the shortcomings of this technology was that if the television set was exposed to direct sunlight. The company president sent the engineers back to the board to come up with a better solution. A system based on radio waves was considered but rejected because the signals could easily travel through walls. Adlers solution was to use sound waves to transmit signals to the TV, by the time of his retirement from Zenith, officially in 1982, Adler was the companys Vice President and Director of Research. He remained an advisor to Zenith until 1999. In 1980, Adler was awarded the Edison Medal, in 1997, Adler and Polley were jointly awarded an Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Adlers latest patent application was filed on October 6,2006 for work on touch-screen technology, robert Adler died in a Boise, Idaho nursing home of heart failure at age 93 years old

11.
Carl Akeley
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He is considered the father of modern taxidermy. He was the founder of the AMNH Exhibitions Lab, the department that fuses scientific research with immersive design. He was born in Clarendon, New York, and grew up on a farm and he learned taxidermy from David Bruce in Brockport, New York, and then entered an apprenticeship in taxidermy at Wards Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. While at Wards Carl Akeley also helped mount P. T, barnums Jumbo after the latter was killed in a railroad accident. In 1886 Akeley moved on to the Milwaukee Public Museum in Milwaukee, Akeley remained in Milwaukee for six years, refining model techniques used in taxidermy. At the Milwaukee Public Museum, his work consisted of animals found in Wisconsin prairies. He also created historical reindeer and orangutan exhibits and he was also a prolific inventor, perfecting a cement gun to repair the crumbling facade of the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago (the old Palace of Fine Arts from the Worlds Columbian Exposition. He is today known as the inventor of shotcrete, or gunite as he termed it at the time, Akeley did not use sprayable concrete in his taxidermy work, as is sometimes suggested. Akeley also invented a highly mobile motion picture camera for capturing wildlife, started a company to manufacture it, F. Trubee Davison covered these and other Akeley inventions in a special issue of Natural History magazine. Akeley specialized in African mammals, particularly the gorilla and the elephant and he also displayed the specimens in groups in a natural setting. Many animals that he preserved he had personally collected, Akeley joined the Explorers Club in 1912, having been sponsored by three of the Clubs seven Charter Members, Frank Chapman, Henry Collins Walsh, and Marshall Saville. For qualifying, Akeley wrote only, Explorations in Somaliland and British East Africa and he became the Clubs sixth president serving from 1917–1918. At that time, gorillas were quite exotic, with very few even in zoos, in 1925, greatly influenced by Akeley, King Albert I of Belgium established the Albert National Park. It was Africas first national park, opposed to hunting them for sport or trophies, he remained an advocate of collection for scientific and educational purposes. One of the members of his 1921 expedition was six-year-old Alice Hastings Bradley and he improved the motion picture camera for working in nature. Akeley also wrote books, including stories for children. He was awarded more than 30 patents for his inventions, Akeley began his fifth journey to the Congo with the start of the dry season in late 1926. He died on November 18 of dysentery and was buried in Africa, just miles from where he encountered his first gorilla and he had previously been married to Delia J. Akeley for nearly 20 years

12.
George Edward Alcorn Jr.
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George Edward Alcorn, Jr. is an American physicist and inventor who worked primarily for IBM and NASA. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015, Alcorn was born on March 22,1940, to George and Arletta Dixon Alcorn in Indianapolis, Indiana. Alcorn received an academic scholarship to Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received his degree with honors while earning eight letters in basketball and football, Alcorn earned a Master of Science in Nuclear Physics in 1963 from Howard University, after nine months of study. During the summers of 1962 and 1963, he worked as an engineer for the Space Division of North American Rockwell. He was involved with the analysis of launch trajectories and orbital mechanics for Rockwell missiles, including the Titan I and II, the Saturn

13.
Charles E. Alden
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Charles E. Alden of New York has been pursuing experiments here since last fall in wireless telephoning. Has, he says, solved the problem of wireless telephoning, an article entitled, “Ingenious Yankee Invents Simple Telephone System” appeared in the May 24,1907 edition of L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans–a New Orleans newspaper. He envisioned the idea in 1906, sixty-seven years before the first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, in 1907, Alden invented and tested a wireless, remote controlled boat off the coast of Marthas Vineyard. This boat was said to have “lifted its own anchor, blows its own whistle, signals, fires a gun and steers” all while the operator is controlling it on shore

14.
Samuel W. Alderson
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Samuel W. Alderson was born in Cleveland, Ohio but was raised in southern California as a toddler where his Romanian-immigrant father ran a custom sheet-metal and sign shop. He graduated from school at the age of 15 and went on to intermittently study at Reed College, Caltech, Columbia. He frequently interrupted his education to help out with the family sheet-metal business and he completed his formal education at the University of California, Berkeley under the tutelage of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence, but did not complete his doctoral dissertation. In 1952, he began his own company, Alderson Research Laboratories, at about the same time, automobile manufacturers were being challenged to produce safer vehicles, and to do so without relying on live volunteers or human cadavers. With this as a goal, Alderson produced the V. I. P, a dummy designed to mimic an average males acceleration and weight properties, and to reproduce the effects of impact like a real person. His work went on to see the creation of the Hybrid family of test dummies, Alderson also worked for the United States military. During World War II, he helped develop a coating to improve the vision of submarine periscopes. He also helped create dummies, known as medical phantoms, that reacted to radiation, and synthetic wounds, used in training simulations. Based on that experience, he formed another company that he managed until shortly before his death, Radiology Support Devices, later on, he built dummies to test the Apollo nose cones water landing capability. Alderson died at his home in Marina Del Rey, California, Alderson was widowed once and divorced three times. In addition to his son Jeremy, he is survived by a sister, another son, and four grandchildren

15.
Cyrus Alger
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Cyrus Alger was a United States arms manufacturer and inventor. Early in life he became a founder, and established his business in Easton. In 1809, he moved to South Boston, where he founded the works that since 1817 were known as the South Boston Iron Company. He supplied the government with large numbers of balls during the War of 1812. He was one of the best practical metallurgists of his time, Alger also devised numerous improvements in the construction of time fuses for bomb shells and grenades. In 1811 he patented a method of making cast-iron chilled rolls, Alger served as a member of the city council during the first year of its existence, and was elected alderman in 1824 and 1827. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Wilson, James Grant, Fiske, John, eds. Cyrus Alger at Find a Grave Extremely Rare Bronze Model 183512 Pound Mountain Howitzer Blissfield Monument Algers Gun Works, And this is good old Boston

16.
David Allais
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Dr. David Allais is an internationally recognized expert and inventor in the fields of bar coding and automatic identification and data capture. Prior to Allais role at Intermec, he served as a manager for IBM, most recently, Allais founded PathGuide Technologies, a Bothell, Washington-based developer of warehouse management systems for distributors. Allais received a bachelor of degree in mechanical engineering in 1954. He received a master of science degree in engineering from the University of Arizona in 1958. In 1965, Allais received a doctor of philosophy degree from Stanford University, Allais is credited with creating five bar code symbologies, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5, Code 11, Code 93 and Code 49. He is also named inventor on the following seven U. S. patents, Patent #3,001,369, Hydraulic System for Driving Several Actuators,1962, Patent #3,067,333, Motion Control Apparatus, Assigned to IBM. Patent #3,670,145, Tape Feed System,1972, Patent #3,784,794, Electro-Optical Reader for Bar Codes,1974, Assigned to National Bank Of Commerce of Seattle. Patent #3,844,210, Multi-Color Printer,1974, Patent #3,909,594, Circuit for Establishing a Reference Voltage in Bar Code Readers,1975, Assigned to Intermec Corporation. Patent #4,794,239, Multi-Track Bar Code,1988, Allais developed Interleaved 2 of 5 in 1972 while at Intermec. It is a numeric only barcode used to encode pairs of numbers into a self-checking, the first digit is encoded in the five bars, while the second digit is encoded in the five spaces interleaved with them. Two out of five bars or spaces are wide. Applications include labeling corrugated shipping containers and identifying casino tickets, in 1974, Allais and Ray Stevens, both at Intermec at the time, developed Code 39. Code 39 is a barcode symbology that can encode uppercase letters, digits, Code 39 is broadly used particularly in the automobile industry and manufacturing. Code 11 is a barcode developed by Allais while at Intermec in 1977. In 1977 Intermec’s printing and reading technology limited the density of Code 39 to 9.4 characters per inch. For numeric applications, Codabar provided somewhat higher density, however, at the time, Intermec was contractually obligated to sell Codabar printers only to Monarch Marking Systems. Interleaved 2 of 5 was not a discrete symbology and thus could not be printed at a high density by our drum printers. It is used primarily in telecommunications, the symbol can encode any length string consisting of the digits 0-9 and the dash character. Code 93 is a barcode developed by Allais in 1982 while at Intermec to provide a higher density

17.
Paul Allen
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Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, alongside Bill Gates, as of August 2016, he was estimated to be the 40th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $18.6 billion. Allen is the founder and Chairman of Vulcan Inc. which manages his various business, Allen also has a multibillion-dollar investment portfolio including technology and media companies, real estate holdings, and stakes in other companies. He owns two sports teams, the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association. He is also part-owner of the Seattle Sounders FC, which joined Major League Soccer in 2009 and he is also the founder of Allen Institute for Brain Science, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Institute for Cell Science, and Vulcan Aerospace. Paul Allen was born on January 21,1953 in Seattle, Washington to Kenneth Sam Allen, Allen attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle, where he befriended Bill Gates, three years younger, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakesides Teletype terminal to develop their skills on several time-sharing computer systems. Allen later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft, Gates explained his official status with Harvard that. if things hadnt worked out, I could always go back to school. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Paul Allen with his friend Bill Gates, in 1975, Allen came up with the original name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. As a result of this transaction, Microsoft was able to secure a contract to supply the DOS that would run on IBMs PC line. This contract with IBM was the watershed in Microsoft history that led to Allens and Gates wealth, Allen effectively left Microsoft in 1982 due to serious illness. Vulcan Capital is an investment-arm of Allens Seattle-based Vulcan Inc. which manages his personal fortune, in 2013, Allen opened a new Vulcan Capital office in Palo Alto, California to focus on making new investments in emerging technology and internet companies. Recent investments include Redfin, Decide. com and Audience Inc, patents, Paul Allen holds 43 patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The startup behind the mobile app Saga, SportStream, an app for sports fans. Ticketmaster, In 1993, Paul Allen invested $243 million to acquire 80% of Ticketmaster, in 1997, Home Shopping Network acquired 47. 5% of Allens stock in exchange for $209 million worth of their own stock. Allen confirmed that he was the investor behind Burt Rutans Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft on October 4,2004. SpaceShipOne climbed to an altitude of 377,591 feet and was the first privately funded effort to put a civilian in suborbital space. It won the Ansari X Prize competition and received the $10 million prize, on December 13,2011, Allen announced the creation of Stratolaunch Systems

18.
Samuel Leeds Allen
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Samuel Leeds Allen was the inventor and manufacturer of the Flexible Flyer sled, for over one hundred years the best selling and most famous American sled. Allen was born on May 5,1841 in Philadelphia to Quaker parents, John Casdorp Allen, a prominent druggist, in 1861, Allen moved to Ivystone, his fathers farm near the community of Westfield in Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey. On November 22,1866, Samuel Leeds Allen and Sarah Hooton Roberts were married in the Friends Meeting House, Moorestown, Allens revolutionary sled was developed and tested at Westtown School and Ivystone. Stokes Hill, a popular sledding area located next to Breidenhart, however, Allen built Breidenhart in 1894, five years after the Flexible Flyer was introduced. In order to provide employment for his workers producing farm equipment. His passion for sledding led him to develop a series of sleds, Patent number 408,681 on August 13,1889 for the Flexible Flyer. Samuel L. Allen, intimate recollections and letters, Moorestown and her neighbors, historical sketches. United States Patent and Trademark Office, The Story of the Flexible Flyer New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Biographical information about Samuel L. Allen Sledding at Westtown

19.
Zachariah Allen
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Zachariah Allen was an American textile manufacturer, scientist, lawyer, writer, inventor and civil leader from Providence, Rhode Island. He was educated at Philips Exeter Academy and at Brown University where he graduated in 1813, Allen became a textile manufacturer and in 1822 constructed a woolen mill in which he incorporated innovative fire-safety features and his own mechanical improvements. He also built the first hot-air furnace system for the heating of homes, in 1833 he patented his best-known device, the automatic cut-off valve for steam engines. He founded the Manufacturers’ Mutual Fire Insurance Company in 1835, the forerunner of the present day insurance company FM Global, Allen was also a prolific writer of scientific texts and wrote numerous books and articles during his lifetime. Zachariah Allen was born on September 15,1795 in Providence, Rhode Island to Zachariah and his older brother Philip, served Rhode Island as governor and later as a United States senator. Allens father died in 1801, when he was five years old, so he was mostly raised by his mother. He was educated at a school in Medford, Massachusetts, then later at Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, Allens mother Anne died in 1808, just a year before he entered Brown University, where he graduated in 1813. Allen later served as a trustee of the University from 1826 to 1882, in 1817, Allen married Eliza Harriet Arnold, the daughter of Welcome Arnold, a well-known Providence merchant who had participated in the Gaspee Affair in 1772. The Allens had three daughters, Anne Crawford, Mary Arnold and Candace, in 1821, Allen devised a system to heat several rooms of a house from a single stove or furnace with a system of heat-conducting pipes. With the advent of the use of coal for heating in the 1820s. In 1822, he organized and constructed a mill in North Providence on the banks of the Woonasquatucket River. In 1825, he went to Europe to observe woolen manufactures, Allen patented an extension roller for raising fobrous naps by teasels to produce a smooth, glossy finish to woolen cloth. This system would be used in mills for many years. He invented the first practical automatic cut-off valve for steam engines, Allens invention was later proclaimed one of the greatest inventions ever made in the steam engines by Stephen Roper in his 1884 Engineers Handybook. In 1852, Allen purchased the 1813 Georgiaville Mill in nearby Smithfield and he rebuilt the existing mill there and increased the sites water power by raising the dam height of the millpond. He later added steam power and enlarged the mill further and he also built additional dwellings, a church, and a school for the increased work force. Although Allen went bankrupt in Panic of 1857, he continued to manage the Georgiaville Mills which his brother had bought, about 1834, after he had taken numerous measures to protect his mill from fire, Allen appealed to his insurance company to lower his premiums. The insurance company claimed to know nothing about his mill, or apparatus, in 1848, Allen formed another mutual insurance company, Rhode Island Mutual Fire Insurance Company to supplement Manufacturers Mutual

20.
David Alter
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David Alter was a prominent American inventor and scientist of the 19th century. He was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and graduated from the Reformed Medical School in New York City and he had German and Swiss ancestry. Dr. David Alter is credited with having invented,1836 - the electric telegraph,1840 - his electric buggy - the forerunner of the automobile. 1845 - a patented method to manufacture and purify bromine from salt wells, highly useful in the iron industry,1854 - spectrum analysis, the idea that every element has its own emission spectrum, a breakthrough development in spectroscopy. The published article was, On Certain Physical Properties of Light Produced by the Combustion of Different Metals in an Electric Spark Refracted by a Prism. He included a chart of the lines or bands of twelve metals and paved the way by showing the spectral lines of brass corresponded to copper. 1855 - an expansion of spectrum analysis to include the properties of gas. These discoveries were later implemented and included by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in the Three Laws of Spectroscopy,1858 - a patented method to extract oil from coal and shale, along with a partner Samuel Hill. Their invention sped manufacturing, but was replaced by technology in a few years, a short range type of telephone - forerunner of the Graham Bell telephone. Dr. David Alter was a doctor, scientist, and famous American inventor, son of John Alter, David began as a physician and scientist in Elderton, Pennsylvania in the 1830s. David Alter married Laura Rowley, and they settled in Elderton, in 1836 Elderton, David Alter invented the electric telegraph, one year before the popular Morse telegraph was invented. David rigged the telegraph between his house and his barn, David Alter obtained medical schooling at the Reformed Medical College in New York City, and at the Cincinnati Medical School. David Alter settled in Freeport, Pennsylvania about 1837, david’s first wife Laura died in 1842, and several years later he married her sister, Amanda Rowley. He had a total of thirteen children and he manufactured bromine near his home, manned a weather station, worked as a physician, and was one of the first daguerreotype photographers of the town of Freeport. Inventions while in Freeport, In the great Pittsburgh Fire of 1845 and he went on to discover Spectral Analysis in 1853. He also invented and patented a method of manufacturing Bromine from salt wells in 1845, dr. Alter resided in Freeport until his death in 1881. Published Biographies, Albert, George Dallas, editor, history of the County of Westmoreland. Philadelphia PA, L. H. Everts and Company,1882, biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong Counties

21.
Mitch Altman
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He is also Chief Scientist and CEO of Cornfield Electronics. Altman grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois, after kindergarten his family moved to Highland Park, Illinois. Altman graduated from Deerfield High School in 1975, Altman is an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he earned an undergraduate degree and a masters degree in electrical engineering. While at the University of Illinois, Altman co-organized the first Hash Wednesday in Champaign-Urbana in 1977, Altman moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1986 to work in Silicon Valley. Altman was a developer of Virtual Reality technologies, working at VPL Research with Jaron Lanier. Altman left VPL Research in protest when it accepted contracts with the United States Department of Defense, Altman co-founded Silicon Valley start-up 3ware in February 1997 with J. Peter Herz and Jim MacDonald. Altman started Cornfield Electronics as a consulting company, after the launch of TV-B-Gone Altman gave the company the tagline We make Useful Electronics for a Better World. In 2004 Altman released a universal remote control called TV-B-Gone. Altman used money from the sale of 3ware to pay for the manufacture of the first 20,000 units of TV-B-Gone, by February 2014, he was reported to have sold more than 500,000 units. He is currently selling the TV-B-Gone generation 4 and he also invented a new product called the TV-B-Gone SHP. Mitch Altman is an important figure in the international hackerspace and maker movements, in October 2008 he co-founded Noisebridge, which was probably the third hackerspace formed in the US. Mitch Altman on Reddit, July 29th,2012

22.
Luis Walter Alvarez
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Luis Walter Alvarez was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968. The American Journal of Physics commented, Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant, after receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the decay theory. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime, in collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron. Enemy submarines would wait until the signal was getting strong and then submerge. The radar system for which Alvarez is best known and which has played a role in aviation. Alvarez spent a few months at the University of Chicago working on nuclear reactors for Enrico Fermi before coming to Los Alamos to work for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan project, Alvarez worked on the design of explosive lenses, and the development of exploding-bridgewire detonators. As a member of Project Alberta, he observed the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29 Superfortress and this work resulted in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968. He was involved in a project to x-ray the Egyptian pyramids to search for unknown chambers, with his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, he developed the Alvarez hypothesis which proposes that the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs was the result of an asteroid impact. Alvarez was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group, the Bohemian Club, Luis Walter Alvarez was born in San Francisco on June 13,1911, the second child and oldest son of Walter C. He had a sister, Gladys, a younger brother, Bob. His aunt, Mabel Alvarez, was a California artist specializing in oil painting and he attended Madison School in San Francisco from 1918 to 1924, and then San Francisco Polytechnic High School. In 1926, his became an researcher at the Mayo Clinic, and the family moved to Rochester, Minnesota. As an undergraduate, he belonged to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, as a postgraduate he moved to Gamma Alpha. In 1932, as a student at Chicago, he discovered physics there and had the rare opportunity to use the equipment of legendary physicist Albert A. Michelson. Observing more incoming radiation from the west, Alvarez concluded that primary cosmic rays were positively charged, compton submitted the resulting paper to the Physical Review, with Alvarezs name at the top. Alvarezs sister, Gladys, worked for Ernest Lawrence as a part-time secretary, Lawrence then invited Alvarez to tour the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago with him. After he completed his exams in 1936, Alvarez, now engaged to be married to Geraldine Smithwick

23.
Nils F. Ambursen
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Nils F. Ambursen was a Norwegian-American civil engineer and inventor, known for his influential dam designs in the early-20th century. He was born in Norway in Fredrikstad, Østfold, and educated at the Telemark Civil Engineering College in Skien, Ambursen came to the United States by the age of 21. Working for the B. F. Sturtevant Company in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903, Ambursen developed a concrete slab and buttress dam for an industrial client in Theresa. Ambursens design was for a buttress dam requiring minimal buttress thickness in which the part is a relatively thin flat slab typically made of reinforced concrete. Ambursens concrete-slab-and-buttress design used far less material than a gravity dam making it both a significant engineering advance and cost effective for clients. Ambursen promptly filed a patent on his own behalf and organized the Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company, from 1903 through 1917, the company used the technique to construct more than one hundred dams in North America, most in New England. The record-breaking 41-meter-tall La Prele Dam in remote eastern Wyoming used 43 percent less concrete than an equivalent concrete gravity dam. The structure allowed an interior hollow under the spillway, the 1907 Bloedes Dam on the Patapsco River in Maryland housed its hydroelectric power plant inside that hollow, the company sued to preserve its patents fairly aggressively but with mixed success. In some cases, the Ambursen dam became a more generic Ambursen type, for instance at the 1911 Lock, Civil engineer George Freeman received his own November 1912 patent on a modified version of the concrete buttress dam used there. In 1917 Ambursen left his company, which has continued to bear his name for over a hundred years, today perhaps fifty Ambursen-type dams from the post-World War II era stand outside the United States. The tallest example,83 metres, is the 1948 Escaba Dam in Tucumán, Argentina